A Fulton County ambulance driver has been charged with DUI after he got into a wreck that resulted in the death of the patient he was transporting. The accident occurred Friday evening around 7 pm, on West Cambellton Road near Golightly Street, when the ambulance driver ran onto the shoulder of the road and overturned the vehicle into a ditch. The patient, a 66-year-old man who was unrestrained at the time of the accident, died at the scene. The 34-year-old ambulance driver was arrested after failing a sobriety test at the scene and has been charged with DUI, open container, and second-degree homicide by vehicle. At his first court appearance on Monday, the driver was denied bond and ordered to remain in jail.
Each year in the U.S. approximately 4,500 ambulance-involved crashes occur and around 30 people die as a result of crashes involving ambulances. While the majority of these deaths occur to the occupants of non-emergency vehicles that collided with the ambulance or pedestrians outside the vehicle, around one-quarter of the deaths involved in ambulance accidents occur to the occupants of the ambulance. Only about one-third of patients injured or killed in ambulance-involved accidents were found to be restrained at the time of the crash, and only 16 percent of EMS workers were. While one of the most common causes of ambulance-involved accidents is driver fatigue, alcohol impairment is one of the leading causes of all types of roadway fatalities.
If you have been injured in an accident involving an alcohol impaired driver or the careless operation of an emergency vehicle, you can seek compensation for the expenses and impacts of your injury through a personal injury claim. An experienced attorney from Cambre & Associates LLC can explain this process to you. Contact us for a free case evaluation.
